Due to restrictions imposed by the Chinese Communist Party affecting travel to Japan, the air routes between China and Japan have been continuously shrinking since 2025. This year, the summer flights between Osaka and various parts of China have decreased by nearly 70% compared to the same period last year.
According to reports from “Kyodo News,” Osaka’s Kansai Airport announced its flight schedule for this year’s summer season (March 29 to October 24). The average number of flights per week between Osaka and various parts of China is only 162.9, a sharp decline of almost 70% compared to last summer’s 536.5 flights.
On March 24, Kansai Airport also released the operational overview for February, showing a 59% decrease in the number of passengers traveling between Osaka and China compared to the same period last year, totaling only 240,000 passengers. However, the overall international passenger number decreased only by 6%, amounting to 1.97 million passengers.
Kansai Airports, the operator of Osaka’s Kansai Airport, through its executive director Hayato Niimi, expressed during a press conference that, “There is currently no immediate improvement expected for Chinese flights, but we still hope for some recovery.”
In stark contrast to the significant contraction of routes to mainland China, the flight frequency between Kansai Airport and Hong Kong, as well as Taiwan, is expected to remain stable or even increase this summer. Overall, during the 2026 summer period, the total number of international flights at Kansai Airport is only expected to decrease by about 17% compared to the previous year, significantly lower than the drop in flights between China and Japan.
According to earlier media reports, the proportion of canceled flights on Chinese-Japanese routes has been continuously increasing since the end of 2025. Data shows that in January 2026, the cancellation rate for flights from China to Japan reached 47.2%, an increase of 7.8 percentage points from December 2025; this further rose to 48.5% in February. During the first week of the Spring Festival travel season (February 1-7), the number of round-trip flights between China and Japan decreased by 49.2% year-on-year, with a total of 1,292 flights being canceled.
In November 2025, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takamichi made remarks regarding “an incident in the Taiwan Strait,” triggering a strong reaction from the Chinese Communist Party. China warned its citizens not to travel to Japan, resulting in a severe blow to the demand for Chinese tourists visiting Japan. As a consequence, airlines have reduced or even completely suspended flights between Osaka and various parts of China.